The aftermath of the British election has inevitably led to discussion about its effect on Brexit. Some people fear and others hope that it will either stop Brexit from taking place entirely or will so water Brexit down as to make it essentially meaningless.

Nothing could be further from the truth, and a good starting point to explain why is to look first at the two party leaders: Prime Minister Theresa May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Theresa May famously voted Remain in last year’s Brexit referendum, though since then she has become increasingly identified as the supporter of ‘hard Brexit’ ie. a Brexit that takes Britain wholly out of the single European market and the various European institutions in a way that would permit Britain to reimpose immigration controls.

Since the election a fringe theory has been doing the rounds that Theresa May intentionally engineered the election outcome in order to stop or water down Brexit. This is based on the fact that Theresa May voted Remain in the Brexit referendum and that the election has supposedly increased the anti-Brexit majority in the British parliament, making it more difficult for the Conservative government to get its ‘hard Brexit’ policy through.

This theory is nonsense. Theresa May is many things but she is no Kamikaze. The idea that her loyalty to the EU project is so fanatical that she would deliberately destroy her political reputation and put in jeopardy her whole career so as to engineer an election outcome that would make ‘hard Brexit’ more difficult is beyond farfetched.

A far more valid point to make about Theresa May is that though she has voiced support for ‘hard Brexit’ in reality she has no Brexit plan at all, and has shown no interest or ability to form one

Thus she delayed for months invoking Article 50, never spelt out a negotiating policy, never undertook a review of what the implications of Brexit would be for British society and for the British economy, never came out with any plans or proposals of how to deal with them, and only edged towards saying she supported ‘hard Brexit’ when forced to do so by the Courts.

When Theresa May did eventually invoke Article 50 – on an arbitrarily chosen date in March, picked so far as I can tell at random – she still had no plan or proposal for Brexit to put forward, as became painfully obvious during her disastrous encounter with EU President Jean-Claude Juncker in Downing Street at the end of April. Instead, in order to conceal her lack of a plan, she made the preposterous request to Juncker that Britain’s entire Brexit negotiation be conducted in secret.

Up against Merkel, Schauble, the European Commission, and the Germans, this total absence of preparation would have set up Britain for disaster. The outcome would not have been a ‘hard Brexit’, and it would certainly not have been no deal at all, an option Theresa May has foolishly floated but which the British economy with its structural budget and trade deficits and its heavy dependence on foreign investment is in no condition to accept. Rather it would have been a heavily lopsided Brexit deal, suiting the EU Commission and the Germans, and putting Britain at a permanent disadvantage.

If Theresa May is not the person who can be relied upon to deliver a ‘hard Brexit’, what can be said about Jeremy Corbyn?

Unlike Theresa May – who prior to becoming Prime Minister is never known to have expressed any concerns about the EU at all – Corbyn for much of his political life outright opposed it. During the referendum on Britain’s EU membership in 1975 he is known to have voted to leave it.

Around 1990 Corbyn, together with most of the Labour Party, was won over by the promises of a ‘social Europe’ made by the then EU Commissioner Jacques Delors. However he has never been a fulsome supporter of the EU, and as the EU has pursued a more integrationist and neoliberal agenda he has steadily become more critical. Many of his closest political friends have remained staunch opponents.

By the time of the Brexit referendum last year Corbyn’s loyalty to the EU was doubted by most of his MPs, who blamed him – wrongly – for the referendum’s outcome, and who accused him – falsely and on no evidence – of voting Leave.

Since the Brexit referendum Corbyn has resisted intense pressure from the Labour Party’s Blairite establishment to take an openly anti-Brexit position. Instead – to the intense anger of the Blairites in the Labour Party and their supporters in the media – he has repeatedly made clear that he accepts the referendum’s outcome, and treats the whole issue of Brexit as settled. In Corbyn’s own words, uttered at the start of the election campaign

This election isn’t about Brexit itself. That issue has been settled. The question now is what sort of Brexit do we want – and what sort of country do we want Britain to be after Brexit?

These words show a far better understanding of what preparing for Brexit involves than anything Theresa May has ever said.

The coup that the Blairites launched against Corbyn last year, and which was intended to oust him from his leadership of the Labour Party, was launched precisely because Corbyn was blamed by the Blairites for Brexit, and was refusing to speak out against it.

The election outcome has wholly vindicated Corbyn’s stance. By accepting Brexit he was able to win back the millions of left leaning working class voters in places like Hartlepool who had voted for Brexit. Had Corbyn opposed Brexit, or appeared reluctant to support it, Theresa May’s strategy of appealing to these voters would have paid off, and the election would have resulted in the Conservative landslide and Labour wipe-out that many people before the election had been expecting.

The election in fact provides no comfort for opponents of Brexit. The Liberal Democrats and the SNP – the two parties which oppose Brexit and which continue to support the EU – did very badly, with the Liberal Democrats picking up a few seats here and there but failing to increase their share of the vote over their disastrous result in the election in 2015, whilst the SNP in Scotland lost ground to both the Conservatives and Labour. UKIP, Nigel Farage’s party – incompetently led in this election by Paul Nuttall with no clear programme or purpose – collapsed, with its voters transferring to the Conservatives and Labour, both of whose leaders accept Brexit.

The actual outcome of this election is that there is no significant political force left in Britain which now opposes Brexit. Both the Conservative and Labour leaderships are committed to it, with both understanding that the future of their parties depends on their supporting it. In Corbyn’s case leaving the EU is in line with his personal political beliefs, whilst in Theresa May’s case the issue does not arise because she doesn’t have any. As for the parties that might still seek to oppose Brexit – the Liberal Democrats and the SNP – both are in eclipse.

The big question is not whether there will be Brexit. It is – in Jeremy Corbyn’s words – “what sort of Brexit do we want – and what sort of country do we want Britain to be after Brexit?”

The mere fact that Jeremy Corbyn has the understanding of the issue to ask this question – something which Theresa May, hiding behind her inane slogan”Brexit means Brexit”, has never done – shows that he is almost certainly the better person to answer it, and to conduct Britain’s negotiations with the EU, than Theresa May is or can ever be.

New Zealand enacts new weapons ban just six days after massacre

Reuters reported on Thursday, March 21 that the Prime Minister of New Zealand enacted a sweeping change, banning weapons of the type that were used in the massacre of at least fifty Muslims, who were gunned down on livestream while in Friday prayer services in Christchurch last week. We quote from the Reuters piece below, with added emphasis:

New Zealand will ban military-style semi-automatic and assault rifles under tough new gun laws following the killing of 50 people in its worst mass shooting, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Thursday.

In the immediate aftermath of last Friday’s shootings at two mosques in the city of Christchurch, Ardern labeled the attack as terrorism and said New Zealand’s gun laws would change.

“On 15 March our history changed forever. Now, our laws will too. We are announcing action today on behalf of all New Zealanders to strengthen our gun laws and make our country a safer place,” Ardern told a news conference.

“All semi-automatic weapons used during the terrorist attack on Friday 15 March will be banned.”

Ardern said she expected the new laws to be in place by April 11 and a buy-back scheme costing up to NZ$200 million ($138 million) would be established for banned weapons.

All military style semi-automatics (MSSA) and assault rifles would be banned, along with parts used to convert weapons into MSSAs and all high-capacity magazines.

Australia banned semi-automatic weapons and launched a gun buy-back after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 in which 35 people were killed.

Ardern said that similar to Australia, the law would allow for strictly enforced exemptions for farmers for pest control and animal welfare.

“I strongly believe that the vast majority of legitimate gun owners in New Zealand will understand that these moves are in the national interest, and will take these changes in their stride.”

This is undoubtedly going to be real red meat (or perhaps real vegetables) for the anti-gun lobby in the United States. This is because New Zealand strongly resembled the US in terms of firearm rights and the penetration of numbers of guns in the populace of this remote island nation. Reuters continues, with statements that would probably surprise, even horrify some gun owners in the States, but which are doubtlessly useful for the application of pressure on such individuals:

New Zealand, a country of fewer than 5 million people, has an estimated 1.2-1.5 million firearms, about 13,500 of them MSSA-type weapons.

Most farmers own guns while hunting of deer, pigs and goats is popular. Gun clubs and shooting ranges dot the country.

That has created a powerful lobby that has thwarted previous attempts to tighten gun laws.

Federated Farmers, which represent thousands of farmers, said it supported the new laws.

“This will not be popular among some of our members but … we believe this is the only practicable solution,” a group spokesman, Miles Anderson, said in a statement.

The main opposition National Party, which draws strong support in rural areas, said it also supported the ban.

The changes exclude two general classes of firearms commonly used for hunting, pest control and stock management on farms.

“I have a military style weapon. But to be fair, I don’t really use it, I don’t really need it,” said Noel Womersley, who slaughters cpoliticalattle for small farmers around Christchurch.

“So I’m quite happy to hand mine over.”

To be absolutely fair, the attack on the mosques was an awful event, made the worse by the shooter’s deliberate attempts to politicize various aspects of what he was doing and what he “stood for” as an attack ostensibly against US President Donald Trump, some seven thousand miles away in the United States.

The immediate reaction of the people interviewed, some among them related or friends with the victims of the massacre, was to embrace the weapons reform laws:

Nada Tawfeek, who buried her father-in-law killed in the attacks, Hussein Moustafa, on Thursday, welcomed the ban.

“It’s a great reaction. I think other countries need to learn from her [Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern],” Tawfeek said.

Mohammed Faqih, a member of the Islamic clergy who flew in from California and attended the funerals for some victims on Thursday, said he was “extremely grateful” for the gun ban.

“I wish our leaders in the States would follow on her footsteps and do the same thing,” he said.

One can expect there to be quite the outcry among American liberals about gun control, especially if anything remotely resembling this event takes place or is thwarted in coming days in the US.

American paleo-conservative Rush Limbaugh was one of the first to note: “There’s an ongoing theory that the shooter himself may, in fact, be a leftist who writes the manifesto and then goes out and performs the deed purposely to smear his political enemies, knowing he’s going to get shot in the process. You know you just can’t – you can’t immediately discount this. The left is this insane, they are this crazy. And then if that’s exactly what the guy is trying to do then he’s hit a home run, because right there on Fox News: ‘Shooter is an admitted white nationalist who hates immigrants.’”

…[P]eople like Limbaugh… can’t stomach the idea the terrorist action in Otautahi might be motivated by the kind of rhetoric Limbaugh helps disseminate – tend to think there is a culture war going on, and they are on the losing side.

This war has many names, and the enemy is easily identified: it is the battle against Cultural Marxism; the fight against Toxic Feminism; the resistance to Identity Politics; and the fear of the Great Replacement, the thesis at the heart of the terrorist’s own manifesto.

The Great Replacement thesis posits that the majority white European countries are being “invaded” by non-white, non-European peoples. Not just that, but due to declining birth rates in the West, this “invasion” constitutes a wholesale replacement of the white population over time.

Mr. Dentith tries further to knock down this notion of the Great Replacement. However, he misses a much more basic point.

Someone who goes and takes human lives and broadcasts them for any reason is not a mere political operative. The person who does this is a very sick, deranged human being indeed. Evil is certainly appropriately used here.

However, evil is often quite cunning, and despite the intellectual arguments about the reality or non-reality of any particular manifesto statement, in this case, the killer played the media with infernal intelligence, and they took the bait. It is possible that Prime Minister Ardern also took the bait, in this most awful of bad situations, and to give her credit, she took swift actions to try to “correct” what was wrong.

But the problem here was not the type of weapons used. The problem is the fact that they were used by a person who thought these fifty people’s lives were worth nothing more than a bit of policy change. One of the worst examples of human evil in recent times, this incident shouts to the world that there is a problem, but the problem remains unsolved, even though many people will hand over their firearms out of a genuine wish for compassion to those lost and the hope that somehow this action will prevent a future incident.

But the logic of this emotional reaction is nil. And what is worse is that the American Left knows this, but does not care. The movers and shakers of liberalism will likely milk the actions of sincerely horrified New Zealanders for all they are worth to try at affecting change in American constitutional rights.

And the innocent dead will not rest in peace, because the real problem has not even been examined.

Upstart Populist Party Shocks In Dutch Election Upset, 2 Days After Utrecht Attack

Dutch voters have sent shock waves through Europe at the polls on Wednesday in the wake of Monday’s deadly Utrecht terror shooting, in which a now detained 37-year old Turkish man went on a terrifying tram killing spree which left three dead and three injured.

Euroskeptic party, Forum for Democracy (FvD), has emerged victorious in key provincial elections this week, paving the way to making it one of the two largest groups in the Dutch Senate, and representing growing Dutch frustration with the recent unprecedented refugee influx in Europe.

Newcomer Forum for Democracy party is led by 36-year-old Thierry Baudet, who is a critic of the EU and of the Netherlands’ immigration policies, via EPA

International reports have described the FvD as receiving “a surge of last-minute support” in the days following the Utrecht attack, which investigators have since described as having a “terror motive” based on a letter found in shooter Gokmen Tanis’ possession.

If people want more deadly shootings like the one in Utrecht, then they have to vote for the VVD.

Baudet, riding a wave of renewed Euroskeptic sentiment, and whose party also wants to see more military spending, green initiatives, and an easing on income tax while greatly restricting the borders, said in the aftermath of Wednesday’s vote: “The voters in the Netherlands have spread their wings and shown their true power.”

Referencing the Utrecht attack and other deadly terror incidents on European soil, he added: “We have been called to the front because we have to. Because the country needs us.”

Three were killed and several injured in Monday’s Dutch tram terror attack, which raised the country’s emergency threat level to five as it was unfolding, its highest level.

Interestingly, the 36-year old Baudet and his party continued campaigning down to the last moments even as others stopped in the wake of Monday’s attack which rocked the Netherlands. According to Al Jazeera:

Following the lead of US President Donald Trump, Baudet opposes immigration and emphasises “Dutch first” cultural and economic themes. He opposes the euro and thinks the Netherlands should leave the European Union.

Baudet had continued campaigning when other parties stopped after Monday’s attack in Utrecht, in which a gunman shot three people dead on a tram. The populist leader blamed the incident on the government’s lax immigration policies.

The FvD is now set to take 12 seats in the upper house of parliament, which is equal to Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s conservative VVD Party, a scenario before this week considered unlikely according to many observers.

The FvD slightly outscoring the VVD means Rutte’s government has lost its majority for the 75-seat Senate ahead of upcoming May elections.

In a post-election speech on Wednesday, Baudet described further that what’s now being described in international media as “an upstart populist party [that has] shocked the Dutch political establishment” as punishing the arrogance of elites.

In his pro-Western civilization themed remarks, Baudet added, “We are standing in the rubble of what was once the most beautiful civilization in the world.”

Will The Trump White House finally punish Facebook for censorship?

The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris take a look at US President Trump’s tweet where he has said that he would be “looking into” a report that his social media chief, Dan Scavino Jr. has been censored by Facebook.

Are we finally about to see the Trump White House move to punish social media outlets for their blatant and bias censorship of alternative narratives that dare to stray from globalist neo-liberal and radical left ideology?

As Big Tech’s censorship of conservatives becomes ever more flagrant and overt, the old arguments about protecting the sanctity of the modern public square are now invalid. Our right to freely engage in public discourse through speech is under sustained attack, necessitating a vigorous defense against the major social media and internet platforms.

I certainly had my suspicions confirmed when Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, “accidentally” censored a post I made regarding the Jussie Smollett hoax, which consequently led to me hearing from hundreds of my followers about how they’ve been having problems seeing, liking or being able to interact with my posts. Many of them even claimed that they’ve had to repeatedly refollow me, as Instagram keeps unfollowing me on their accounts.

While nothing about Big Tech’s censorship of conservatives truly surprises me anymore, it’s still chilling to see the proof for yourself. If it can happen to me, the son of the president, with millions of followers on social media, just think about how bad it must be for conservatives with smaller followings and those who don’t have the soapbox or media reach to push back when they’re being targeted?

Thanks to a brave Facebook whistleblower who approached James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, we now know that Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant developed algorithms to “deboost” certain content, limiting its distribution and appearance in news feeds. As you probably guessed, this stealth censorship was specifically aimed at conservatives.

Facebook appears to have deliberately tailored its algorithm to recognize the syntax and style popular among conservatives in order to “deboost” that content. “Mainstream media,” “SJW” (Social Justice Warrior) and “red pill” — all terms that conservatives often use to express themselves — were listed as red flags, according to the former Facebook insider.

Facebook engineers even cited BlazeTV host Lauren Chen’s video criticizing the social justice movement as an example of the kind of “red pills” that users just aren’t allowed to drop anymore. Mainstream conservative content was strangled in real time, yet fringe leftists such as the Young Turks enjoy free rein on the social media platform.

Despite the occasional brave gesture, politicians have been far too sluggish in recognizing the extent of the problem. But the Republican Party and the conservative movement are becoming more vigilant against the suppression of our speech, as we saw at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

Silicon Valley lobbyists have splashed millions of dollars all over the Washington swamp to play on conservatives’ innate faith in the free-market system and respect for private property. Even as Big Tech companies work to exclude us from the town square of the 21st century, they’ve been able to rely on misguided conservatives to carry water for them with irrelevant pedantry about whether the First Amendment applies in cases of social media censorship.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has been making a name for himself as a Republican prepared to stand up to Big Tech malfeasance since his time as Missouri’s attorney general. He delivered a tour de force interview with The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel in front of the CPAC crowd, one that provided a clear-eyed assessment of the ongoing affront to the freedoms of conservative speech and expression.

Hawley demolished the absurd notion that “conservative principles” preclude taking action to ensure free debate online simply because Big Tech firms — the most powerful corporations in the world — are private companies.

Hawley pointed out that Big Tech companies already enjoy “sweetheart deals” under current regulations that make their malfeasance a matter of public concern. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, for instance, allows them to avoid liability for the content that users post to their platforms. To address this problem, Hawley proposed adding a viewpoint neutrality requirement for platforms that benefit from Section 230’s protections, which were originally enacted to protect the internet as “a forum for a true diversity of political discourse.”

“Google and Facebook should not be a law unto themselves,” Hawley declared. “They should not be able to discriminate against conservatives. They should not be able to tell us we need to sit down and shut up!”

It’s high time other conservative politicians started heeding Hawley’s warnings, because the logical endpoint of Big Tech’s free rein is far more troubling than conservative meme warriors losing their Twitter accounts. As we’re already starting to see, what starts with social media censorship can quickly lead to banishment from such fundamental services as transportation, online payments and banking.

Left unchecked, Big Tech and liberal activists could construct a private “social credit” system — not unlike what the communists have nightmarishly implemented in China — that excludes outspoken conservatives from wide swaths of American life simply because their political views differ from those of tech executives.

There is no conservative principle that even remotely suggests we are obligated to adopt a laissez-faire attitude while the richest companies on earth abuse the power we give them to put a thumb on the scale for our political enemies.

If anything, our love of the free market dictates that we must do whatever is necessary to ensure that the free marketplace of ideas remains open to all.